Now that Riverside’s city manager has been abruptly fired, there’s another question: Who’s running the city?

After the City Council terminated John Russo on Tuesday night, April 17, it chose an interim city manager — who officials learned Wednesday may be ineligible for the job.

Lee McDougal had been set to start Friday, April 20 — though he hadn’t yet signed a contract and said he was first contacted about the job Tuesday.Now it’s unclear who will have authority over the city’s day-to-day decisions in the near future.

Council members had expressed confidence in McDougal, the retired longtime city manager of Montclair, based on his work as Riverside’s interim city manager from December 2014 until May 2015. They praised McDougal for keeping the ship steady between the tenures of permanent city managers Scott Barber and Russo.

But that interim stint is exactly the problem.

A state law that’s been in place since 2013 says a retired person can only be appointed to the same interim position once.

Councilman Jim Perry, who’s taking a lead role in selecting the new city manager because he’s overseen searches before, did not confirm McDougal’s name.

But Perry said complications related to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System were delaying the announcement of an interim city manager.

“We’re still researching some PERS issues,” Perry said Wednesday evening.

Councilman Steve Adams said Tuesday night — shortly after the City Council voted 4-3 to fire Russo — that council members had chosen McDougal. Other council members confirmed the decision Wednesday.

McDougal said Wednesday afternoon that he looked forward to working with the council, all of whom he’d worked with before when they were either council members or council staff members. His plan was to continue the city’s direction until the council chose a permanent replacement, he said.

“I wouldn’t say I have big plans,” he said, “except to continue with the fine work that’s been done.”

His first contact about the job came when Perry called him Tuesday, McDougal said. Perry then called back Wednesday afternoon to say city officials were researching the retirement complication, McDougal said.

Perry said the City Council will meet in closed session between Thursday, April 19, and Tuesday, April 24, to discuss an interim city manager.

In the meantime, no single person is filling the city manager’s role, but the city’s top staffers are handling things without any problems, he said.

Lawsuit unresolved

The City Council voted 5-2 in February to extend Russo’s contract until December 2024, but Mayor Rusty Bailey announced at the end of that meeting that he would veto the new contract because it was too generous and poorly timed.

The battle that followed — including Bailey filing a lawsuit against the city to establish that he has the power to veto the contract — has dominated much of the discussion by and about city officials since.

Bailey, who was visiting Riverside’s sister city in Gangnam, South Korea, on Tuesday when Russo was fired, said he approved of the council’s vote.

“I appreciate the council’s leadership and decision making on this tough issue,” Bailey said Wednesday.

Bailey said he hoped the city would consider an internal candidate for interim city manager.

And he said he needed to talk to his lawyers about whether to drop his lawsuit against the city.

“Obviously I hope it will lead to a faster resolution, but I need to talk to my legal team about that,” Bailey said. “The reason I filed it was to substantiate checks and balances in our city … There’s different interpretations of the charter and we need to resolve some of those.”

Bailey’s attorney, Susan Knock Beck, said in a separate conversation that she would consult with Bailey about the case’s future.

Russo’s contract

Russo’s contract, which went into effect in February despite Bailey’s position that it was vetoed, was criticized by many members of the public for several provisions.

The new contract — like his old one — gave him a 3 percent raise in 2018, which would have meant a salary of $323,946, and continuing raises for a total of seven years.

Because he was fired without cause — meaning the council didn’t point to anything he did wrong as the reason for the firing — Russo is entitled to a severance equal to one year’s salary.

For the same reason, he will keep the 15-year, $675,000, loan from the city for his Riverside home that drew much of the controversy.

Council members and members of the public have praised Russo for bringing significant developments to the city, including the Measure Z sales tax to fund police and the planned Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture and Industry.

Ryan Hagen covers the city of Riverside for the Southern California Newspaper Group. Since he began covering Inland Empire governments in 2010, he's written about a city entering bankruptcy and exiting bankruptcy; politicians being elected, recalled and arrested; crime; a terrorist attack; fires; ICE; fights to end homelessness; fights over the location of speed bumps; and people's best and worst moments. His greatest accomplishment is breaking a coffee addiction. His greatest regret is any moment without coffee.